Thoughts on Mando-Guitar Hybrid

[Northern Pike]

I just caught on YouTube a fellow playing an six-string (single strings) instrument tuned like a guitar but raised an octave. The body was your typical A-Style with F-holes. Encountered the Gibson Guitar/Mando before, but this instrument left me interested. It was a Gold Tone product.

I would like to know if anyone has messed around with these guys, and if so, what did you think? In spite of the 4th tuning, it really had a nice mando vibe.

[mandroid]

A clever person took one of the Gibson ones, and stripped off the fingerboard ,
replaced it with a Fan fret fingerboard, and converted it to a CGDAE 5 string.

Imagine playing your guitar from the 12th fret upward.

[T.J.]

The Gold Tone GM-6 does have that ukulele/mandolin vibe, and has the advantage of standard guitar tuning (albeit an octave above a full size guitar). I've tried the Gold Tone GM-6, with an eye towards converting it to full fifths tuning, but ultimately decided not to get one.

I can definitely see their appeal, especially if one doesn't want to learn an entirely new instrument.

[jim_n_virginia]

The body was your typical A-Style with F-holes. Encountered the Gibson Guitar/Mando before, but this instrument left me interested. It was a Gold Tone product.

I would like to know if anyone has messed around with these guys, and if so, what did you think?

Personally I don't like'em. I mean maybe for like a novelty instrument to add to the collection or something (the Gibson one not the GoldTone) but generally I think if your gonna play guitar then play the guitar, if your gonna play the mandolin then play the mandolin.

[fishtownmike]

I would just call this an octave guitar. The fact that it has a mandolin shaped body doesn't make it a mandolin. In my opinion the doubled strings is one of the things that makes a mandolin sound like a mandolin. I have seen what are called mandolins that only have 4 strings and in my opinion they really don't sound like a mandolin. Dean made a thing called the mondo that had 9 strings that were tuned like a 12 string guitar and octave higher minus the e,a and d string octave strings and it still sounded like a guitar to me.

[uinsin42]

<irrelevant post deleted>

[Cliff D]

"NB: Maple isn't as durable as ebony or rosewood when using the round-wound strings.. Flat wound strings are mostly used with maple fingerboad electric guitars.......Fender, for example."


Well, here is a fretless telecaster, with what I believe to be a maple neck & wound strings, & it seems to be holding up. I have two fretless basses, one of which was supplied with wound round stings. This does bear scratches from the windings, but as I have observed in other threads, string action & abrasion through fingers in time seem to polish the board & make it smoother to play.

Now if we are talking fretted instruments, I would agree that the Fender branded strings are of a "ground" wound variety, but many players use full round strings with maple boards, & with fretted instruments strings should stay on the frets & not rub on the board (thus one gets more flesh around the string, & more control!) in any event.

[Jim]

I feel if you were sold ebony you should receive ebony , but, I wore out the frets on my maple finger board strat with only some finish wear on the board and that was with Regular slinkys. I think Maple holds up fine to round wound.

[Northern Pike]

I would just call this an octave guitar. The fact that it has a mandolin shaped body doesn't make it a mandolin. In my opinion the doubled strings is one of the things that makes a mandolin sound like a mandolin. I have seen what are called mandolins that only have 4 strings and in my opinion they really don't sound like a mandolin. Dean made a thing called the mondo that had 9 strings that were tuned like a 12 string guitar and octave higher minus the e,a and d string octave strings and it still sounded like a guitar to me.

Beethoven wrote fine mandolin sonatas for a non-coursed, single-string mandolin having six strings. They weren't the GDAE fiddlins we happily pluck today. The classical mandolin community considers them standards, but mostly played on four-course GDAE birds. I wonder if they had more in common with the hybrid mando/guitar than the one we play today. Vivaldi's mandolins had a different tuning as well, yet they are mandolin favorites played today (and also much played on nylon guitar).

E would be the same. B and G would be open, as well as D and A. And downtuning the E to D = Celtic magic :). I thought it was pretty neat idea. No, not a mandolin or guitar proper, yet a neat alternative.

I never will, though, spend the money Gibson wants for their hybrid. I looked it up and initially though it was a typo.

[Big Joe]

The "mando-guitar" acoustic hybrids I've seen have been pretty much a failure. First, they don't satisfy a mandolin player since they are tuned like a guitar. Second, they don't satisfy guitar players because they don't really play or sound like a guitar. Like most instruments that try to be a compromise instrument they are just that... a compromise. We did make one at the big G and it was not a success by any means because it did not satisfy any market that was interested. We looked at ways to make it more successful, but essentially it was a A model mandolin with six tuners and it never did work right for any of the genres that may have been interested. I have not found another similar instrument to be any better.

In most cases, you can just capo your acoustic guitar at the 12th fret and get a better functioning instrument than the guitar-mando turned out to be. If you want a mandolin, just get a mandolin. The only combination instrument I've seen that works for both mandolin and guitar is a double neck electric guitar that has one neck for mandolin and one for guitar. It did not sound like an acoustic instrument, but it was a cool electric~! Just my opinion.

[mandroid]

Fractional Guitars are made too, 5/8, 3/4, 1/2, and the Tacoma Papoose is a steel string guitar,
a 4th higher tuning .. A to a

[T.J.]

In spite of all those who don't feel it's a good idea, there are still those who are buying and using them.

I don't think the point is that they aren't selling as well as mandolins or guitars. If that were a criteria, it's surprising I don't see negative posts of the same sort in the various tenor guitar threads. "If you want a guitar, get a guitar! If you want a fifths-tuned instrument, get a bouzouki or a tenor banjo! Don't get something that's in between!"

"Well, the double strung mandolin has history!" There's not even a prior art argument to stand on, since the single-strung mandolin is far older than the Loar instruments.

Anyway, all this is irrelevant to the original poster's question. Except for Big Joe, it sounds like many of those who are negative have never tried one. "I've never tried one, and I'll never try one, and I think they're poopy for existing!" *laugh*

Big Joe came at it from the viewpoint of the economics of a big company making a niche instrument at $6000, a price far beyond the average mandolin or guitar; the Gold Tone is less than $350, low enough for an impulse buy for a guitarist who just wants a different instrument to double on. Some have never been in a position to consider buying a mandolin OR a guitar at the cost of the Gibson M6, and have never even spent that much on a car. To judge the appeal of a type of instrument, based on sales of the most expensive example, seems a little off to me.

Joe is pretty clear that the Gibson M6 was not successful, but it's also clear that "successful" is in terms of sales, not in terms of construction. At the price of $6k, I can imagine it's easier to just pay someone to sit in for a studio session rather than buy an instrument to double on. At lower budgets, say $350-400, I can see how someone would pick up either an Eastman (if one could learn mandolin) or the GM-6 (if a guitarist just wanted to play one right out of the box). Either of the latter two solutions cost substantially less, and my guess is that the GM-6 has been been more successful in terms of unit sales than the M6.

----

Although it's easy for me to see how these are different arguments than what the original poster was asking about, it's possible that inexperienced players or potential players might not understand the difference. I figure it's worth it to give just that bit more of information, so they can judge whether those arguments ("Never touched, never will, so there!" and "This company couldn't sell them for the price of a car, so they're not successful") actually apply to them.

Getting back to the OP's original question... anyone else ever try one?

[mandroid]

More 'thoughts', as it were ...
Guess some patience will be useful , if sales were weak, few are in circulation,
perhaps more direct to find the name of the guy who was on the U tube clip he saw,
and ask them.
:popcorn:

nobody here but us ~:>

[TEE]

I played one about three weeks ago. I play guitar and mandolin so I was able to play it and even played a lead break or two.

I actually put it on a stand behind me and let the owner borrow my HD28 so I would not have to hear the horrid thing.

It's sound is almost the same sound you hear if you rake the strings behind the bridge.

[Big Joe]

TJ... my point was not really about the economics of any particular instrument. The M6 was a well built instrument from a structural point, and it was not 6K until the very end of its life. It was a far more modest price point for much of its life, but it was not accepted in spite of its price because those who tried them did not like them. It it had been 100.00 they would still not have been a very successful instrument. It never did perform well as a mandolin sounding 6 string instrument tuned like a guitar, and it did not perform well as a guitar either. Neither end of the spectrum were happy with it. The fret and string spacing were far too close for guitar players, and the guitar tuning was not comfortable to mandolin players.

It was, as most of these instruments are, an attempt to make an instrument that was supposed to sound like a mandolin for guitar players. It just did not work. It never was able to give guitarists what they were looking for. It did not play like a guitar because the string tension was too high and it did not sound like a mandolin. Like most compromise instruments, it usually does nothing well.

It was certainly an experiment worth trying. It was not a success from a financial consideration because it was not a good product. Not because it was not well built, but because it was not a product that did what anyone wanted or expected it to do. Once it was in the product lineup it was very hard to get rid of. We did what we could when we realized it was not functional for anyone, but there are corporate issues with killing a product. Those I cannot discuss, but I can say none of us thought it should continue in the lineup. The artists did not like them and neither did the amateurs who bought them. In any case, I don't think price did anything but help us kill the project over time.

Had it been built with a longer scale and wider neck it may have been a bit more successful and useful, but then it gets away from the tone that was aimed for and it would not have been close enough to a product already built by OAI. Remember the M6 was really just an A5 with a tailpiece altered to hold 6 strings and the headstock drilled for 6 strings. Otherwise it was just an A model mandolin. This added to the problems. The neck was the same width as a mandolin and all these issues made it less than functional as a real instrument. Again, it never did what it was hoped it would do.

All of us there hoped it would really be cool. We COULD play it, but we did not want to. It just never worked like it should. Those who tried it that were guitar players were quickly disillusioned and quit playing it. Those who were mandolin players really hated it because it was just not mandolin enough. They never did get into it. Those who played both hated it most because it just could not do even a passable job as either a mandolin or guitar. Finally it died a death of natural causes... much after it should have.

It really would not matter who made the instrument or what they charged for it, it would never become a functional instrument for use by many. The same fate has been felt by certain other instruments like the 6 string banjo. It has been made by several manufacturers, but it does not sound quite like a banjo nor like a guitar, and it suffers much the same fate the M6 did. This has been true of many instrument compromises. People will continue to build compromise instruments with the hope of finding a new niche that seems unserved, and we will continue to see these oddities enter the market. In reality though none of them have been successful because the market itself does not feel they are worth having in the marketplace.

These are my observations and experience. I have seen a lot of these kind of compromise instruments over the years and I do encourage the experimentation. One never knows what may come from the next experiment. Some items may even carve out a small following in a niche market and that is great. You would be amazed at how many "innovative" things have come across my bench over the years. I have had an amazing array of instruments, parts, and hardware that people have invented and tried. Most ended with no possibility of every making the market. A few have made it through and have done very well, even if in a small market.

[T.J.]

Hey, Joe!

It's funny that you bring up the six-string banjo. It's definitely a niche... and I've been thinking about buying one recently. *laugh* I have heard folks successfully use them, and I'm not about to learn an entirely new instrument for that banjo sound. The fact that it would cost less than $200 is definitely a selling point, in the same way I'd pick up a Gibson M6 for $100, if only to experiment on.

I guess I have a different perspective on what can be a steady seller over time.

When living the DC area, I worked in a store which sold folk and ethnic music and instruments from around the world. We had our share of funky old instruments and new instruments from everywhere. (It was while working there that I picked up my Flatiron mandola, since we were one of the first to start stocking them.)

We had folks who bought high end instruments, but a lot of our customers just wanted something they could use. We sold tons of banjo-ukes and six-string banjos, alongside the Deerings and such. We had a broad range of prices for any given family of instruments.

A lot of folks just came in and got what appealed to them. That might not have made those items great sellers nationally, but they had their niche. Flute players and whistle players might have thought that ocarinas weren't all that, but we sold quite a few low end AND high end ocarinas to folks who felt they had found a match, enough that the high end brands are still sold in the store more than 30 years later.

I suspect that the GM-6 is a similar instrument, with a similar narrow appeal.

Although I no longer live in the DC area, within two miles of my new home there are two music stores which stock the Gold Tone GM-6 (and have for a while). Could this instrument have found its niche with its current price point? How strange is *that*?

[jim_n_virginia]

it sounds like many of those who are negative have never tried one. "I've never tried one, and I'll never try one, and I think they're poopy for existing!" *laugh*

Getting back to the OP's original question... anyone else ever try one?

I've tried and have even owned a few ... and like I said I don't like them.

The OP asked for opinions and he is getting them.

[allenhopkins]

Couple things:
The German company Bruko made a nice octave guitar, about the size of a concert ukulele. I bought one from Lark In the Morning for about $200 with vinyl gig bag. It sounds more uke-like than mandolin-y, of course, but it's well-designed for that particular (small) musical niche.

Second, a Tip of the Hat to Gold Tone for making a such a wonderful variety of "off" instruments, such as the cello banjo, banjo-ukulele, mandolin banjo, piccolo banjo, "banjola" (mandola body with a 5-string banjo neck), tenor guitar, and now the 6-string mandolin. I can't believe that they sell more than a couple thousand of each of these, but they're willing to make them and market them, and I think that's great. They're making a decent guitar-banjo as well (and by the way, those who think you can't get great music from a 6-string banjo should listen to Harvey Reid).

Clearly, the market for the 6-string mandolin or octave guitar wasn't big enough for Gibson to keep the instrument in stock, for the musical-inadequacy reasons Big Joe outlines. But for those few who want such an instrument, Gold Tone has come through, and at a reasonable price.

I bought a banjola, piccolo banjo, and cello banjo from Gold Tone, and found them very acceptable instruments, especially for the price. Nice to see a company willing to fill a variety of small niches in the stringed instrument market.

[Northern Pike]

Big Joe,

I asked for a nickel and you palmed me a fifty dollar bill. :) Beyond business sense, I gather the impression is that mandolins, violins, guitars, banjos and ukuleles each leave their own imprint folks are VERY reluctant to cross.

I suppose when you make hybrids from any these tested tools the structure of many styles of music is upset. Even when the situation is open-minded and generous, a hybrid or even mandola or tenor guitar must alter the frame of things considerably.

It is sad though. I fell upon the Cuatro by mistake, one night having had too many beers and searching YouTube. What a wonderful instrument it is; it is a shame mandoleers have not given it its due. It is not mainstream in North America, yet it should be an instrument sexy attractive to mandolin players. But like Big Joe said in a different vein, the Cuatro is a player without a place. It makes sense.

Yet I love the lyre, baroque violin, tenor guitar, viola gamba, and an un-numbered other string instruments you have little access to in our pop mass-is-good environment.

[woodwizard]

Personally I don't like'em. I mean maybe for like a novelty instrument to add to the collection or something (the Gibson one not the GoldTone) but generally I think if your gonna play guitar then play the guitar, if your gonna play the mandolin then play the mandolin.

I'm with you Jim on that. I tried to get use to one of those at the showcase in Nashville awhile back when they first came out. Allthough I didn't play it for hours I did however play it long enough that I walked away thinking that thing was a very stupid idea. I asked a guy that was in a booth french polising a F5 about it and he smiled and said when Henry likes it that's all that counts. At that time they were considerably lower in price and then later jumped up even with F5G or more.
They don't sell so just double the price. Go figure. :confused: